Amazon requires employees to be in the office for five days a week, with AWS supervisors even warning that those who do not want to return to the office should resign. Some employees believe that working from home maintains the same level of efficiency, with no data proving the benefits of returning to the office, which also wastes commuting time.
Many technology companies in the USA are ending the work-from-home trend that arose during the pandemic period, with Amazon strongly requiring employees to return to the office, which has sparked strong opposition from some employees.
On October 17th, Matt Garman, the CEO of Amazon's cloud computing business (AWS), warned at an all-staff meeting that if they don't want to return to the office, they should resign. He plans to implement a new rule requiring employees to work in the office five days a week.
Amazon announced this new rule last month, which employees must comply with by January 2nd next year. Previously, the company only required employees to work in the office at least three days a week. Garman strongly expressed:
If someone finds it difficult to work in that environment and doesn't want to work, that's okay, there are other companies. At Amazon, we want to be in a collaborative work environment, as we believe a collaborative environment is very important for our innovation and culture.
Amazon plans to completely transform the work-from-home trend during the pandemic to keep up with competitors in the ai competition like Google and OpenAI. This is also one of the main tasks facing Garman, who took over the cloud computing business (AWS) department in June this year.
However, this new rule has triggered strong dissatisfaction and opposition from some employees. They believe that the efficiency of remote work or hybrid work is as high as working in the office. They argue that this policy wastes additional commuting time, and independent data also cannot prove the benefits of working in the office.
According to a source familiar with the matter who spoke to CNBC, about 37,000 employees have joined an internal Slack channel created last year, advocating for remote work and sharing their dissatisfaction with the return-to-office requirements.
At the all-staff meeting, Garman stated that he has been talking with employees, "In fact, ninety percent of the employees are very excited about this change." He admits that in certain situations, employees will have some flexibility.
Amazon is the world's second largest private employer, only behind Walmart. Compared to many tech peers like Google, Meta, and Microsoft, Amazon has a more stringent attitude towards employees returning to work, with these companies all implementing a two to three-day return policy.